County Employees Needed to Help Count People Experiencing Homelessness

Our County is doing more than ever before to address homelessness—and we could use your help.

County employees are needed to volunteer for the annual Point-in-Time Count, scheduled to take place from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 26.

Each year, the Point in Time Count begins our region’s effort to count the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night of the year—to talk with them, collect information to help us understand the scope of the homeless problem, people’s circumstances and their needs. This count also helps our region apply for federal and state funding to help serve this vulnerable population and measure our efforts to reduce homelessness.

You can be part of that effort by volunteering a few hours of your time—paid for and on the clock, thanks to approval by the County Board of Supervisors.

The deadline to sign up is 5 p.m., Monday, Jan. 23. However, employees who receive the OK to take part from their supervisors are encouraged to register as soon as possible because deployment sites fill up quickly. You can review the FAQs and then obtain approval from your supervisor via the supervisor approval form if you are interested in participating.

Once you get approval, please sign up here.

After you have signed up, you will receive an email receipt for this event. In the email there will be a link to a training for you to review from The Regional Task Force on Homelessness, which is leading the local point-in-time effort with the WeALLCount campaign.

Volunteers will be asked to arrive at their deployment locations by 3:45 a.m. to give themselves time to become familiar with a mobile counting app that helps us conduct a more accurate count and receive your count area map.

The 2023 count, as directed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will again entail an “engaged” survey-based approach, where people on the streets will be surveyed as they are encountered, rather than just an observational count.

This will be the ninth year that County employees have volunteered to take part in the count. The Regional Task Force on Homelessness reported last year that the 2022 count found 8,427 people experiencing homelessness—a number they said should be considered a minimum—across the county, a 10% increase from the 2020 count. No count was taken in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the 2022 count, roughly 150 County employees helped out, and are again encouraged to take part in this important effort. Members of the public can also join the count. If you know family or friends who would like to participate, they can sign up to volunteer.

So, if you’d like to help make a difference in addressing this important issue, please volunteer.